Education
Interprofessional Education
Rex Hobbs, program director of the LMU-DCOM
Physician Assistant Program and associate professor of
physician assistant studies, has received a new
assignment in recent months: to direct LMU-DCOM’s
new Center for Interprofessional Education (IPE).
In the World Health Organization’s 2010
publication Framework for Action on Interprofessional
Education & Collaborative Practice: “interprofessional
education occurs when students from two or more
professions learn about, from and with each other to
enable effective collaboration and improve health
outcomes. Interprofessional education is a necessary
step in preparing a ‘collaborative practice-ready’ health
workforce that is better prepared to respond to local
health needs.”
“IPE is not a new concept,” Hobbs said. “It really
embodies the idea of a team approach to optimizing
patient care. But it’s become more of a buzzword over
the past five to 10 years due to things on the national
front, like patient care and patient satisfaction issues.
Many of those track back to communication issues.
What are ways we can minimize patient errors?
“It gets back to people working together in the
health care setting. And it’s also about knowing what
other professions do. For example, a patient might
benefit from occupational therapy, but the provider
might not refer the patient for OT because he or she
simply doesn’t know anything about it.”
IPE comes in many curricular forms and is now a
requirement for several health care professions,
including physicians, physician assistants and nurses.
“It may be something as simple as having a pharmacist
come in to talk during the DO curriculum,” Hobbs said.
“It can be informational. As we go up the order, there
may be mixed group discussion. DO, PA and nursing
students might be put together to hold a patient care
scenario or peer teaching. The higher level would be a
shared simulation with physicians, PAs, pharmacists
and nurses to work as a team to effectively manage the
patient. The best model for IPE is a combination of all
these things.”
No matter when a health care professional received
his or her education, IPE is now something many
practitioners must care about, as the concept of IPE is
beginning to drive how practitioners are evaluated for
continued
certification and
licensure.
“It gets into a lot
of professional
competencies,”
Hobbs said. “Every
profession has
competencies that
are a benchmark of a truly effective
professional. A lot of these are similar between the
professions. Almost all of them embody the idea of a
systems-based practice. When we talk about IPE,
systems-based practice is how that is applied from a
competency standpoint of a practitioner postgraduation.
“We need to have some type of educational model
to help people be able to achieve an expert level of
competency in systems-based practice. We are not
going to wait until after you graduate and are in the
field. We want to take it all the way back to when
students are going through their professional
education.”
For Hobbs, the first challenge in establishing the
Center for IPE at LMU-DCOM is coming up with a
curriculum that meets the needs of the various health
professions on campus. Hobbs said, “There are several
different bodies that have come up with objectives
about what interprofessional education should look
like.”
For right now, the program is still in its infancy.
“The current idea is looking to at least developing a
speaker’s bureau of individuals that are in the
institution, as well as others that are in the area that are
interested in speaking to the students,” Hobbs said.
“They may also help facilitate small groups. The
calendar is a challenge right now, but one commonality
across all curriculums is that everybody’s got lunch. So
we may have lunches and provide speakers to start.”
As the Center for IPE grows and expands its
offerings, Hobbs envisions the center impacting the
entire LMU campus. Hobbs said, “It brings advantages
over time that ripple out into the institution itself. One
bridge will form another bridge. As more bridges are
developed, more things become possible.”
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